Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (33 page)

Our exalted task then is
to find order in these seven measures, a pattern that is distinct
and will keep always the sense alert and the memory clear...This
exalted and incomparable configuration not only performs the
function of preserving entrusted things, words, and arts...but in
addition it gives us true knowledge...

¡XGiulio Camillo
Delminio, L'idea del Theatre, Florence, Torrentino, 1550,
Introduction

A few minutes later,
Agile came in. "Do forgive me, dear friends, I had to deal with a
dispute that was regrettable, to say the least. As my friend
Casaubon knows, I consider myself a student of the history of
religions, and for this reason people not infrequently come to me
for illumination, relying perhaps more on my common sense than on
my learning. It's odd how, among the adepts of sapiential studies,
eccentric personalities are sometimes found...I don't mean the
usual seekers after transcendental consolation, I don't mean the
melancholy spirits, but men of profound knowledge and great
intellectual refinement who nevertheless indulge in nocturnal
fantasies and lose the ability to distinguish between traditional
truth and the archipelago of the prodigious. The people with whom I
spoke just now were arguing about childish conjectures. Alas, it
happens in the best families, as they say. But do come into my
little study, please, where we can converse in more comfortable
surroundings."

He raised the leather
curtain and showed us into the next room. "Little study" is not how
I would have described it; it was spacious, with walls of exquisite
antique shelving crammed with handsomely bound books all of
venerable age. What impressed me more than the books were some
small glass cases filled with objects hard to identify¡Xthey looked
like stones. And there were little animals, whether stuffed,
mummified, or delicately reproduced I couldn't say. Everything was
bathed in a diffuse crepuscular light that came from a large
double-mullioned window at the end, with leaded diamond panes of
transparent amber. The light from the window blended with that of a
great lamp on a dark mahogany table covered with papers. It was one
of those lamps sometimes found on reading tables in old libraries,
with a dome of green glass that could cast a white oval on the page
while leaving the surroundings in an opalescent penumbra. This play
of two sources of light, both unnatural, somehow enlivened the
polychrome of the ceiling. The ceiling was vaulted, supported on
all four sides by a decorative fiction: little brick-red columns
with tiny gilded capitals. The many trompe 1'oeil images, divided
into seven areas, enhanced the effect of depth, and the whole room
had the feeling of a mortuary chapel, impalpably sinful,
melancholy, sensual.

"My little theater,"
Aglie said, "in the style of those Renaissance fantasies where
visual encyclopedias were laid out, syl-loges of the universe. Not
so much a dwelling as a memory machine. There is no image that,
when combined with the others, does not embody a mystery of the
world. You will notice that line of figures there, painted in
imitation of those in the palace of Mantua: they are the thirty-six
decans, the Masters of the Heavens. And respecting the tradition,
after I found this splendid reconstruction¡Xthe work of an unknown
artist¡XI went about acquiring the little objects in the glass
cases, which correspond to the images on the ceiling. They
represent the fundamental elements of the universe: air, water,
earth, and fire. Hence the presence of this charming salamander,
the master-work of a taxidermist friend, and this delicate
reproduction in miniature, a rather late piece, of the aeolipile of
Hero, in which the air contained in the sphere, were I to activate
this little alcohol stove, warming it, would escape from these
lateral spouts and thereby cause rotation. A magic instrument.
Egyptian priests used it in their shrines, as so many texts inform
us. They exploited it to claim a miracle, which the masses
venerated, while the true miracle is the golden law that governs
this secret and simple mechanism of the elements earth and fire.
Here is learning that our ancients possessed, as did the men of
alchemy, but that the builders of cyclotrons have lost. And so I
cast my gaze on my theater of memory, this child of so many vaster
theaters that beguiled the great minds of the past, and I know. I
know better than the so-called learned. As it is below, so it is
above. And there is nothing more to know.''

He offered us Cuban
cigars, curiously shaped¡Xnot straight, but contorted,
curled¡Xthough they were thick. We uttered cries of admiration.
Diotallevi went over to the shelves.

"Oh," Aglie said, "a
minimal library, as you see, barely two hundred volumes; I have
more in my family home. But, if I may say so, all these have some
merit, some value. And they are not arranged at random. The order
of the subjects follows that of the images and the
objects."

Diotallevi timidly
reached out as if to touch a volume. "Help yourself," Aglie said.
"That is the Oedypus Aegyptiacus of Ath-anasius Kircher. As you
know, he was the first after Horapollon to try to interpret
hieroglyphics. A fascinating man. I wish this study of mine were
like his museum of wonders, now presumed lost, scattered, because
one who knows not how to seek will never find...A charming
conversationalist. How proud he was the day he discovered that this
hieroglyph meant ¡¥The benefices of the divine Osiris are provided
by sacred ceremonies and by the chain of spirits...' Then that
mountebank Cham-pollion came along, a hateful man, believe me,
childishly vain, and he insisted that the sign corresponded only to
the name of a pharaoh. How ingenious the moderns are in debasing
sacred symbols. The work is actually not all that rare: it costs
less than a Mercedes. But look at this, a first edition, 1595, of
the Am-phitheatrum sapientiae aeternae of Khunrath. It is said
there are only two copies in the world. This is the third. And this
volume is a first edition of the Tetturis Theoria Sacra of
Burnetius. I cannot look at the illustrations in the evening
without feeling a wave of mystical claustrophobia. The profundities
of our globe...Unsuspected, are they not? I see that Dr. Diotallevi
is fascinated by the Hebrew characters of Vigenere's Traicte des
Chiffres. Then look at this: a first edition of the Kabbala
denudata of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. The book was translated
into English¡Xin part and badly¡Xat the beginning of this century
by that wretch McGregor Mathers...You must know something of that
scandalous conventicle that so fascinated the British esthetes, the
Golden Dawn. Only from that band of counterfeiters of occult
documents could such an endless series of debasements spring, from
the Stella Matutina to the satanic churches of Aleister Crowley,
who called up demons to win the favors of certain gentlemen devoted
to the vice anglais. If you only knew, dear friends, the sort of
people one has to rub elbows with in devoting oneself to such
studies. You will see for yourselves if you undertake to publish in
this field."

Belbo seized this
opportunity to broach the subject. He explained that Garamond
wished to bring out, each year, a few books of an esoteric
nature.

"Ah, esoteric." Aglie
smiled, and Belbo blushed.

"Should we
say...hermetic?"

"Ah, hermetic." Aglie
smiled.

"Well," Belbo said,
"perhaps I am using the wrong word, but surely you know the
genre."

Aglie smiled again. "It
is not a genre. It is knowledge. What you wish to do is publish a
survey of knowledge that has not been debased. For you it may be
simply an editorial choice, but for me, if I am to concern myself
with it, it will be a search for truth, a queste du
Graal."

Belbo warned that just
as the fisherman who casts his net could pull in empty shells and
plastic bags, so Garamond Press might receive many manuscripts of
dubious value, and that we were looking for a stern reader who
would separate the wheat from the chaff, while also taking note of
any curious by-products, because there was a friendly publishing
firm that would be happy if we redirected less worthy authors to
it...Naturally, a suitable form of compensation would be worked
out.

"Thank heavens I am what
is called a man of means. Even a shrewd man of means. If, in the
course of my explorations, I come upon another copy of Khunrath, or
another handsome stuffed salamander, or a narwhal's horn (which I
would be ashamed to display in my collection, though the Treasure
of Vienna exhibits one as a unicorn's horn), with a brief and
agreeable transaction I can earn more than you would pay me in ten
years of consultancy. I will look at your manuscripts in the spirit
of humility. I am convinced that even in the most commonplace text
I will find a spark, if not of truth, at least of bizarre
falsehood, and often the extremes meet. I will be bored only by the
ordinary, and for that boredom you will compensate me. Depending on
the boredom I have undergone, I will confine myself to sending you,
at the end of the year, a little note, and I will keep my request
within the confines of the symbolical. If you consider it
excessive, you will just send me a case of fine wine."

Belbo was nonplussed. He
was accustomed to dealing with consultants who were querulous and
starving. He opened the briefcase he had brought with him and drew
out a thick manuscript.

"I wouldn't want you to
be overoptimistic. Look at this, for example. It seems to me
typical."

Aglie took the
manuscript: "The Secret Language of the Pyramids...Let's see the
index...Pyramidion...Death of Lord Carnarvon...Testimony of
Herodotus..."He looked up. "You gentlemen have read it?"

"I skimmed through it,"
Belbo said.

Aglie returned the
manuscript to him. "Now tell me if my summary is correct." He sat
down behind the desk, reached into the pocket of his vest, drew out
the pillbox I had seen in Brazil, and turned it in his thin,
tapering fingers, which earlier had caressed his favorite books. He
raised his eyes toward the figures on the ceiling and recited, as
if from a text he had long known by heart:

"The author of this book
no doubt reminds us that Piazzi Smyth discovered the sacred and
esoteric measurements of the pyramids in 1864. Allow me to round
off to whole numbers; at my age the memory begins to fail a
bit...Their base is a square; each side measures two hundred and
thirty-two meters. Originally the height was one hundred and
forty-eight meters. If we convert into sacred Egyptian cubits, we
obtain a base of three hundred and sixty-six; in other words, the
number of days in a leap year. For Piazzi Smyth, the height
multiplied by ten to the ninth gives the distance between the earth
and the sun: one hundred and forty-eight million kilometers. A good
estimate at the time, since today the calculated distance is one
hundred and forty-nine and a half million kilometers, and the
moderns are not necessarily right. The base divided by the width of
one of the stones is three hundred and sixty-five. The perimeter of
the base is nine hundred and thirty-one meters. Divide by twice the
height, and you get 3.14, the number ir. Splendid, no?"

Belbo smiled and looked
embarrassed. "Incredible! Tell me how you¡X"

"Let Dr. Aglie go on,
Jacopo," Diotallevi said.

Agile thanked him with a
nod. His gaze wandered the ceiling as he spoke, but it seemed to me
that the path his eyes followed was neither idle nor random, that
they were reading, in those images, what he only pretended to be
digging from his memory.

Now, from apex to base,
the volume of the Great Pyramid in cubic inches is approximately
161,000,000,000. How many human souls, then, have lived on the
earth from Adam to the present day? Somewhere between
153,000,000,000 and 171,900,000,000.

¡XPiazzi Smyth, Our
Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, London, Isbister, 1880, p.
583

"I imagine your author
holds that the height of the pyramid of Cheops is equal to the
square root of the sum of the areas of all its sides. The
measurements must be made in feet, the foot being closer to the
Egyptian and Hebrew cubit, and not in meters, for the meter is an
abstract length invented in modern times. The Egyptian cubit comes
to 1.728 feet. If we do not know the precise height, we can use the
pyramidion, which was the small pyramid set atop the Great Pyramid,
to form its tip. It was of gold or some other metal that shone in
the sun. Take the height of the pyramidion, multiply it by the
height of the whole pyramid, multiply the total by ten to the
fifth, and we obtain the circumference of the earth. What's more,
if you multiply the perimeter of the base by twenty-four to the
third divided by two, you get the earth's radius. Further, the area
of the base of the pyramid multiplied by ninety-six times ten to
the eighth gives us one hundred and ninety-six million eight
hundred and ten thousand square miles, which is the surface area of
the earth. Am I right?"

Belbo liked to convey
amazement with an expression he had learned in the cinematheque,
from the original-language version of Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring
James Cagney: "I'm flabbergasted!" This is what he said now. Aglie
also knew colloquial English, apparently, because he couldn't hide
his satisfaction at this tribute ttrhis vanity. "My friends," he
said, "when a gentleman, whose name is unknown to me, pens a
compilation on the mystery of the pyramids, he can say only what by
now even children know. I would have been surprised if he had said
anything new."

"So the writer is simply
repeating established truths?" "Truths?" Aglie laughed, and again
opened for us the box of his deformed and delicious cigars. "Quid
est veritas, as a friend of mine said many years ago. Most of it is
nonsense. To begin with, if you divide the base of the pyramid by
exactly twice the height, and do not round off, you don't get IT,
you get 3.1417254. A small difference, but essential. Further, a
disciple of Piazzi Smyth, Flinders Petrie, who also measured
Stonehenge, reports that one day he caught the master chipping at a
granite wall of the royal antechamber, to make his sums work
out...Gossip, perhaps, but Piazzi Smyth was not a man to inspire
trust; you had only to see the way he tied his cravat. Still, amid
all the nonsense there are some unimpeachable truths. Gentlemen,
would you follow me to the window?"

He threw open the
shutters dramatically and pointed. At the corner of the narrow
street and the broad avenue, stood a little wooden kiosk, where,
presumably, lottery tickets were sold.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I
invite you to go and measure that kiosk. You will see that the
length of the counter is one hundred and forty-nine centimeters¡Xin
other words, one hundred-billionth of the distance between the
earth and the sun. The height at the rear, one hundred and
seventy-six centimeters, divided by the width of the window,
fifty-six centimeters, is 3.14. The height at the front is nineteen
decimeters, equal, in other words, to the number of years of the
Greek lunar cycle. The sum of the heights of the two front corners
and the two rear corners is one hundred and ninety times two plus
one hundred and seventy-six times two, which equals seven hundred
and thirty-two, the date of the victory at Poitiers. The thickness
of the counter is 3.10 centimeters, and the width of the cornice of
the window is 8.8 centimeters. Replacing the numbers before the
decimals by the corresponding letters of the alphabet, we obtain C
for ten and H for eight, or C10H8, which is the formula for
naphthalene."

"Fantastic," I said.
"You did all these measurements?" "No," Aglie said. "They were done
on another kiosk, by a certain Jean-Pierre Adam. But I would assume
that all lottery kiosks have more or less the same dimensions. With
numbers you can do anything you like. Suppose I have the sacred
number 9 and I want to get the number 1314, date of the execution
of Jacques de Molay¡Xa date dear to anyone who, like me, professes
devotion to the Templar tradition of knighthood. What do I do? I
multiply nine by one hundred and forty-six, the fateful day of the
destruction of Carthage. How did I arrive at this? I divided
thirteen hundred and fourteen by two, by three, et cetera, until I
found a satisfying date. I could also have divided thirteen hundred
and fourteen by 6.28, the double of 3.14, and I would have got two
hundred and nine. That is the year in which Attalus I, king of
Pergamon, joined the anti-Macedonian League. You see?"

"Then you don't believe
in numerologies of any kind," Dio-tallevi said,
disappointed.

"On the contrary, I
believe firmly. I believe the universe is a great symphony of
numerical correspondences, I believe that numbers and their
symbolisms provide a path to special knowledge. But if the world,
below and above, is a system of correspondences where tout se
tient, it's natural for the kiosk and the pyramid, both works of
man, to reproduce in their structure, unconsciously, the harmonies
of the cosmos. The so-called pyr-amidologists discover with their
incredibly tortuous methods a straightforward truth, a truth far
more ancient, and one already known. It is the logic of research
and discovery that is tortuous, because it is the logic of science.
Whereas the logic of knowledge needs no discovery, because it knows
already. Why must it demonstrate that which could not be otherwise?
If there is a secret, it is much more profound. These authors of
yours remain simply on the surface. I imagine this one also repeats
all the tales of how the Egyptians knew about
electricity..."

"I won't ask how you
managed to guess."

"You see? They are
content with electricity, like any old Marconi. The hypothesis of
radioactivity would be less puerile. There is an interesting idea.
Unlike the electricity hypothesis, it would explain the much
vaunted curse of Tutankhamen. And how were the Egyptians able to
lift the blocks of the pyramids? Can you lift boulders with
electric shocks, can you make them fly with nuclear fission? No,
the Egyptians found a way to eliminate the force of gravity; they
possessed the secret of levitation. Another form of energy...It is
known that the Chaldean priests operated sacred machines by sounds
alone, and the priests of Karnak and Thebes could open the doors of
a temple with only their voice¡Xand what else could be the origin,
if you think about it, of the legend of Open Sesame?"

"So?" Belbo
asked.

"Now here's the point,
my friend. Electricity, radioactivity, atomic energy¡Xthe true
initiate knows that these are metaphors, masks, conventional lies,
or, at most, pathetic surrogates, for an ancestral, forgotten
force, a force the initiate seeks and one day will know. We should
speak perhaps"¡Xhe hesitated a moment¡X "of telluric
currents."

"What?" one of us asked,
I forget who.

Aglie seemed
disappointed. "You see? I was beginning to hope that among your
prospective authors one had appeared who could tell me something
more interesting. But it grows late. Very well, my friends, our
pact is made; the rest was just the rambling of an elderly
scholar.''

As he held out his hand
to us, the butler entered and murmured something in his ear. "Ah,
the sweet friend," Aglie said, "I had forgotten. Ask her to wait a
moment...No, not in the living room, in the Turkish
salon."

The sweet friend must
have been familiar with the house, because she was already on the
threshold of the study, and without even looking at us, in the
gathering shadows of the day at its end, she proceeded confidently
to Aglie, patted his cheek, and said: "Simon, you're not going to
make me wait outside, are you?" It was Lorenza
Pellegrini.

Aglie moved aside
slightly, kissed her hand, and said, gesturing at us: "My sweet
Sophia, you know you are always welcome, as you illuminate every
house you enter. I was merely saying good-bye to these
guests."

Lorenza turned, saw us,
and made a cheerful wave of greeting¡XI don't believe I ever saw
her discomposed or embarrassed. "Oh, how nice," she said; "you also
know my friend! Hello, Jacopo."

Belbo turned pale. We
said good-bye. Aglie expressed pleasure that we knew each other. "I
consider our mutual acquaintance to be one of the most genuine
creatures I ever had the good fortune to know. In her freshness she
incarnates¡Xallow an old man of learning this fancy¡Xthe Sophia,
exiled on this earth. But, my sweet Sophia, I haven't had time to
let you know: the promised evening has been postponed for a few
weeks. I'm so sorry.''

"It doesn't matter,"
Lorenza said. "I'll wait. Are you going to the bar?" she asked
us¡Xor, rather, commanded us. "Good. I'll stay here for a half hour
or so. Simon's giving me one of his elixirs. You should try them.
But he says they're only for the elect. Then I'll join
you."

Aglie smiled with the
air of an indulgent uncle; he had her take a seat, then accompanied
us to the door.

Out in the street again,
we headed for Pilade's, in my car. Belbo was silent. We didn't talk
all the way there. But at the bar, the spell had to be
broken.

"I hope I haven't
delivered you into the hands of a lunatic," I said.

"No," Belbo said. "The
man is keen, subtle. It's just that he lives in a world different
from ours." Then he added grimly: "Or almost."